I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to methods and apparatuses for facilitating a communication between an access point base station and a neighboring base station.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. This communication link may be established via a single-in-single-out, multiple-in-signal-out or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into Ns independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels, where NS≦min {NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
A MIMO system supports a time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. In a TDD system, the forward and reverse link transmissions are on the same frequency region so that the reciprocity principle allows the estimation of the forward link channel from the reverse link channel. This enables the access point to extract transmit beamforming gain on the forward link when multiple antennas are available at the access point.
Recent developments in LTE technology have been directed towards efficient use of Automatic Neighbor Relation (ANR). For instance, in LTE Release 8, added support for ANR among cells was provided, which allows evolved Node Bs (eNBs) and evolved Home Node Bs (HeNBs) to recognize their neighbors. Subsequent to creating a neighbor relation, (H)eNBs can communicate with each other to exchange further information.
Several different mechanisms are available to assist with ANR. For example, UE measurement reports can be utilized which list other eNBs and HeNBs that the UE can hear. ANR may also be assisted via operation and maintenance (OAM) insertion and updating of entries into the neighbor relation table. Other contemplated mechanisms include potentially using a receiver co-located at the node to detect system information blocks (SIBs) from neighboring (H)eNBs or eNBs, which would typically be available only at a HeNB. Also, although a backhaul X2 connection can be used to communicate with a neighboring eNB and share information about its neighbors, such mechanism is not available in HeNBs since they do not support X2 interfaces.
Since HeNBs may be sporadically deployed in an area, ANR can be particularly useful for HeNBs. Namely, since the HeNB landscape of an area may vary frequently, coordinating with such HeNBs to share available resources is particularly important. Accordingly, it would be desirable to develop a method and apparatus for augmenting the ANR mechanism for use with HeNBs.
The above-described deficiencies of current wireless communication systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.